Me and Sam-Sam Handle the Apocalypse

Susan Vaught's Me and Sam-Sam Handle the Apocalypse is a funny, big-hearted mystery for 8 year olds about a girl, her very small dog and a very big storm.

What happens

Jesse lives in a small town in Kentucky with her dad, her great-aunt Gus and Sam-Sam, a tiny white Pomeranian. Her mum is a soldier in Iraq with a bomb-sniffing dog called Shotgun. So Jesse is training Sam to sniff things out too (with bacon-rubbed tennis balls, and not much luck so far).

The book opens in a school gym, with sirens wailing and everyone being rushed into the hallway. Then it jumps back a week to show how things got so bad.

A week earlier, Jesse burns her itchy new tank tops in the fire pit. She runs off to her secret clubhouse in the woods and finds the new boy, Springer, hiding inside with her copy of A Wrinkle in Time. That night the police take her dad away in handcuffs. More than two thousand dollars has gone missing from his desk at school.

Jesse knows he didn't take it. So she, Springer and Sam set out to find out who did.

Jesse tells the story herself, and her voice is the reason to read it. She counts the clicks of the gym clock. She gets stuck on words. She can't stand scratchy clothes, she never tells lies, and she isn't always sure when she's being rude. The book never turns her into a lesson. She's just Jesse, and she's brilliant company.

There's so much warmth in it. Aunt Gus hoots with laughter at exactly the wrong moments. Springer is gentle and bookish. And Sam-Sam thinks he's massive.

A few things a parent might want to know first. Three kids at school are proper bullies, and Jesse daydreams about breaking one boy's nose with a basketball (she settles for stamping on his toes). Her dad's arrest is upsetting to read. And the storm is frightening, with the school ceiling falling in on the children early in the book. If your reader can cope with a bit of peril, the heart in this one more than makes up for it.

What to read next

If they want another storm story with a dog in it and a family member serving far away, try I Survived the Joplin Tornado, 2011. Dex has always wanted to see a tornado, and his big brother is a Navy SEAL on a secret mission overseas.